1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and a print control method, and more particularly to an information processing apparatus and method for printing, in a desired layout, a Web page constituted by a plurality of parts such as with a multi-column layout.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 shows an example of a Web page with a typical multi-column structure. In most cases, a main content P10, such as the body of a news article or a blog article (entries), is arranged in the center. Secondary content such as a header P20, a navigation bar P30 (internal and external site links) and banner advertisements P40 are arranged as parts (objects) around the main content. This secondary Web content P20 to P40 is necessary for easily moving between displayed Web pages, for instance, and is not really necessary in the case of reading a Web page printed on paper.
Thus, Web site designers have heretofore been recommended to provide Web sites with “style sheets for printing” that eliminate parts such as navigation bars and advertisements, separately from the pages for display. By using these style sheets, printed material from which navigation bars, advertisements and the like has been removed can be obtained, as shown in FIG. 2. Here, a print style sheet is layout information for converting a page for display such as in FIG. 1 to a layout such as the page for printing in FIG. 2, and, specifically, contains instructions that result in only the main content P10 being printed the full width of the page.
However, since the work involved in providing style sheets for printing falls on Web site designers, there are many Web sites with respect to which style sheets have not been prepared, and printing can only be performed in the same layout as the pages for display. Also, since advertisements, internal and external site links and the like are sometimes arranged on the pages for printing, it is not necessarily the case that all pages for printing will be in a layout desired by the user who actually performs the printing.
Techniques such as shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-250054 and in HP Inkjet Printers—Using Smart Web Printing Software ([online, Japanese only], updated August 2008, Hewlett-Packard Japan Ltd., viewed Dec. 25, 2008, URL: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/ws/document?1c=ja&cc=jp&docuname=c01418497) have been proposed in order to alleviate this shortcoming with pages for printing. In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-250054, a technique for extracting and rearranging a plurality of objects constituting a Web page and generating a new Web page in a free layout is discussed. Also, HP Inkjet Printers—Using Smart Web Printing Software is an example of software that has actually been developed. A page to be printed can be created with the feel of a scrapbook by using this software to copy and paste portions of a Web page that the user wants to print.
Using the techniques disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-250054 and HP Inkjet Printers—Using Smart Web Printing Software enables a desired print layout to be realized by rearranging a Web page. However, the user has to carry out the tedious process of rearranging the objects forming the print target, whenever he or she wants to print a Web page. For example, in the case where a user frequently visits a given news site and frequently prints pages thereof, he or she must perform the process of cutting and rearranging only the articles while eliminating advertisements and the like every time, despite this process being predictable. While this is a standard process, it is difficult to automate the rearranging process with conventional methods, since the length of articles varies even within the same site.